Texas Rides on the “Power” of The Wind

HOUSTON – Texas is a leader in wind power technology that produces electricity and is helping drive the economy.

The state is reaching new instantaneous peak outputs surpassing 12,000 megawatts (MW).

In fact, the number of American homes-equivalent that operating wind power capacity can power is about 15.5 million.

Wind Power supplies almost 29% of total electricity load, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the grid’s operator. The average wind production in that hour was 10,120 MW.

“America’s wind energy sector is a success story,”Thomas C. KiernanCEO, AmericanWind Energy Association said in a letter to Congress about the use of wind technology. “…As a nation, we need to find ways to encourage more production of clean, affordable, homegrown energy that will in turn create more jobs, drive economic development, and provide energy security for America.”

What is wind power?

According to the American Wind Energy Association, wind power captures the natural wind in our atmosphere and converts it into mechanical energy then electricity. People started using wind power centuries ago with windmills, which pumped water, ground grain, and did other work.

Today’s wind turbine is a highly evolved version of a windmill. Modern wind turbines harness wind’s kinetic energy and convert it into electricity. Most wind turbines have three blades and sit atop a steel tubular tower, and they range in size from 80-foot-tall turbines that can power a single home to utility-scale turbines that are over 260 feet tall and power hundreds of homes. Wind is a type of renewable energy, and there are three major types of wind power.

The major types of wind power are:

Utility-scale wind, wind turbines larger than 100 kilowatts are developed with electricity delivered to the power grid and distributed to the end user by electric utilities or power system operators;

Distributed or “small” wind, which uses turbines of 100 kilowatts or smaller to directly power a home, farm or small business as it primary use;

Offshore wind, which are wind turbines erected in bodies of water around the world, but not yet in the United States.

How wind energy works

When wind blows past a turbine, the blades capture the energy and rotate. This rotation triggers an internal shaft to spin, which is connected to a gearbox increasing the speed of rotation, which is connect to a generator that ultimately produces electricity. Most commonly, wind turbines consist of a steel tubular tower, up to 260 feet, which supports both a “hub” securing wind turbine blades and the “nacelle” which houses the turbine’s shaft, gearbox, generator and controls. A wind turbine is equipped with wind assessment equipment and will automatically rotate into the face of the wind, and angle or “pitch” its blades to optimize energy capture.

How wind energy gets to you

Wind turbines often stand together in a windy area that has been through a robust development process in an interconnected group called a wind project or wind farm, which functions like a wind power plant. These turbines are connected so the electricity can travel from the wind farm to the power grid. Once wind energy is on the main power grid, electric utilities or power operators will deliver the electricity where it is needed. Smaller transmission lines called distribution lines will collect the electricity generated at the wind project site and transport it to larger “network” transmission lines where the electricity can travel across long distances to the locations where it is needed, when finally the smaller “distribution lines” deliver electricity directly to your town and home.

How wind projects are developed

The current estimate of wind energy potential is 10 times the amount of electricity consumption for the entire country. This strong wind resource varies across the country by region and topography. Wind energy projects are developed by companies that seek out the areas with the strongest wind resource but also review other critical factors like acccess to land, access to the transmission lines, ability to sell the electricity, and public engagement other significant development factors. Once a site is identified, a developer will conduct wind resource assessment, siting and permitting, transmission studies over a period of several years. The majority of wind projects are located on private land, where the developer leases the land from the original landowner providing lease payments. After early stages of development, a developer will seek out a constract with a purchaser of electricity, raise capital from the finance markets, order wind turbines, and hire a specialized construction company to build the project. Once a project is built and delivering electricity to the power grid, a project owner or operator will maintain the project for its 20 to 30 year life.

Wind energy in the United States

The U.S. is blessed with a strong wind resource across the entire country. The current estimate of wind energy potential is 10 times the amount of electricity consumption for the entire country. This strong wind resource varies across the country by region and topography. By the end of 2012, America had 45,100 operating wind turbines across 39 states as well as Puerto Rico representing 60,009 megawatts (MW) – enough to power over 15.5 million homes (which is roughly the number of homes in six states). The United States gets 3.5 percent of its electricity from wind overall, but certain states use much more. For instance, Iowa and South Dakota get more than 20 percent of their electricity from wind.

Wind energy worldwide

Wind power has increased exponentially since the dawn of the 21st century. The adoption of wind energy globally has changed dramaically since the 1980’s when California was home to 90% of the world’s installed wind energy capacity. In fact, the amount of operating wind energy capacity has increase more than 16 times between 2000 and 2012, to over 282,000 MW of operating wind capacity. In 2012, the United States represented nearly 22% of the world’s installed wind energy capacity, second only to China, and followed by Germany, Spain, and India.

Benefits of wind energy

Wind energy is a clean, renewable form of energy that uses virtually no water and pumps billions of dollars into our economy every year. In 2012 alone, wind energy companies invested $25 billion into new wind energy projects in the U.S. Furthermore, wind energy is a drought-resistant cash crop in many parts of the country, providing economic investment to rural communities through lease payments to landowners. Wind energy helps avoid a variety of environmental impacts due to its low impact emitting zero greenhouse gas emissions or conventional pollutants and consuming virtually no water. Wind energy is also insourcing jobs in the manufacturing sector. The wind industry employs 80,000 people across construction, development, engineering, operations with tens of thousands enployed across 550 U.S. manufacturing facilities.

For more information about wind power and how it is changing power production, helping improve our nation’s power and energy grid and the United States role in serving as a major market for wind energy globally, go to awea.org.

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